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Well, I was joking ( ). But honestly, I did think you were the other "cheater" - I misread your post to mean that you checked your 401k results through 4/2 or 4/3. Now I see that you meant you checked the balance for the quarterly results and you didn't "cheat". Appologies, good sir. But for the record, I was kidding about folks being cheaters anyway. It isn't like you get a prize here for super investment results!

Thought I would throw in my results (401k, which is about 90% stock): 2.0%

When the market took its dive in late Feb., I decided to track my performance results to see how fast or slow my account would recover - as a "test" to its diversification (I know, its a really short timeframe for that, but I thought it would be an interesting exercise anyway ).

Late Feb., before the first dive: 3.5% for the year

Lowest point after both dives: -1.1%

1st quarter: 2.0%

I also thought a couple of my fund results for the first quarter were interesting to me:

Well, I was joking ( ). But honestly, I did think you were the other "cheater" - I misread your post to mean that you checked your 401k results through 4/2 or 4/3. Now I see that you meant you checked the balance for the quarterly results and you didn't "cheat". Appologies, good sir. But for the record, I was kidding about folks being cheaters anyway. It isn't like you get a prize here for super investment results!

I know you were kidding... I just wanted to check who you thought was cheating...

I'm amazed (and confused) that year after year the majority of the posters manage to beat the S&P 500 by a sizeable margin. Even professional money managers have a tough time doing that. Just what is the deal here? Do you guys really do that good? I'm not calling anybody here a cheater... But if it's true, I just want to get in on the action!

I'm amazed (and confused) that year after year the majority of the posters manage to beat the S&P 500 by a sizeable margin. Even professional money managers have a tough time doing that. Just what is the deal here? Do you guys really do that good? I'm not calling anybody here a cheater... But if it's true, I just want to get in on the action!

The S&P500 is dominated by large cap growth stocks. Large cap growth did rather poorly compared to other asset classes in Q1 2007, making the S&P500 easy to beat.

And this situation has been true most years since 2000.

Audrey

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Well, I thought I was retired. But it seems that now I'm working as a travel agent instead!

The S&P500 is dominated by large cap growth stocks. Large cap growth did rather poorly compared to other asset classes in Q1 2007, making the S&P500 easy to beat.

And this situation has been true most years since 2000.

Audrey

If you look at the poll done at the close of 2006, most people beat the S&P 500 for the year of 2006. And that year the S&P 500 returned better than 13%! I can understand that if you hold some international that can supercharge your return, but if you hold any bonds or fixed income that's going to knock it way down.

If you look at the poll done at the close of 2006, most people beat the S&P 500 for the year of 2006. And that year the S&P 500 returned better than 13%! I can understand that if you hold some international that can supercharge your return, but if you hold any bonds or fixed income that's going to knock it way down.

What strategy became popular in recent years? Slice and dice, right? Overweight small value, right? What happens when a lot of money rushes into small and value? Small gets big, value gets growthy.

The recent outperformance of small and value relative to the S&P 500 is the largest since WWII. Many believe the time has come for that to change.

I can't speak for everyone else, but I established a target asset allocation and have been investing based on that target asset allocation. I'll be the first to admit that when the large caps (as represented by the SP500) outperform small caps and value and international, I'll experience some "tracking error". I like that term better than underperform the market!

If you look at the poll done at the close of 2006, most people beat the S&P 500 for the year of 2006. And that year the S&P 500 returned better than 13%! I can understand that if you hold some international that can supercharge your return, but if you hold any bonds or fixed income that's going to knock it way down.

Well, I matched the S&P500 in 2006, and with only 57% in equities! Reason? I had international, small cap, medium cap, and REITs in addition to large cap funds in my equity portion, and so the equity portion of my portfolio WAY outperformed the S&P500. These funds made up for any drag from bonds. I basically got the same performance as the S&P500 with significantly less risk/volatilty - a great deal IMO.

Even DODBX beat the S&P500 in 2006! It did 13.9%, and it generally holds a 60%/40% equities/bonds ratio.

Until large cap comes back in fashion - and it will one day - it won't be so hard to beat the S&P500.

Audrey

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Well, I thought I was retired. But it seems that now I'm working as a travel agent instead!

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